Sunday, December 11, 2005

School Tycoon - reviewI Love tycoon games, so it was worth my time to try out Mall Tycoon and School Tycoon. Although I like the idea of both, I don't like them in practice. Heres my thoughts on them:Firstly, (and maybe most importantly) these are *personality-free games*. You might think that having brightly coloured buttons, and constant mouseover blips, plus cartoony people, gives a game personality. It does not. Personality means someone *cares* about the game, and has made it the way they want, not to fit a feature-list of marketing demographic. Good games are like good art, you can *feel* the personality of their creator.

Black and white is like thatThe Sims is like thatSim City is like thatDemocracy is like that :D

Games need to have a 'feel' and an 'attitude', that makes you think that somewhere, a guy (or girl) is holding the finished copy saying "this what I saw in my minds eye, this is what I wanted", rather than it just being item 17b on a publishers balance sheet"Our demographic data indicates a profitable niche at sector 12, lets dispatch 6 faceless staff to process this opportunity"

Even if that wasn't bad enough, School Tycoon fails because:

a) The demo tries to act as a server acording to my firewallb) The uninstall doesn't work at allc) The demo gives me the hard sell BEFORE I've even played itd) Almost every building in the game is locked, and unlocked only in a specific order. Ironically I can't build a school cafe without first building a soda machine. HELLO! There are people who dont think you should even have fizzy drinks machines inside schools, and this game FORCES me to buy one? Don't these people realise that Tycoon games are about choice? about being in charge and taking the decisions yourself?????